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p toward that end is courtesy; that the second step is courtesy, and the third step--such a fine and high courtesy (which includes courage) as the President showed in the Panama tolls controversy. We have--we and the British--common aims and character. Only a continuous and sincere courtesy--over periods of strain as well as of calm--is necessary for as complete an understanding as will be required for the automatic guidance of the world in peaceful ways. Now, a difference is come between us--the sort of difference that handled as between friends would serve only to bind us together with a sturdier respect. We send a long lawyer's Note, not discourteous but wholly uncourteous, which is far worse. I am writing now only of the manner of the Note, not of its matter. There is not a courteous word, nor a friendly phrase, nor a kindly turn in it, not an allusion even to an old acquaintance, to say nothing of an old friendship, not a word of thanks for courtesies or favours done us, not a hint of sympathy in the difficulties of the time. There is nothing in its tone to show that it came from an American to an Englishman: it might have been from a Hottentot to a Fiji-Islander. I am almost sure--I'll say quite sure--that this uncourteous manner is far more important than its endless matter. It has greatly hurt our friends, the real men of the Kingdom. It has made the masses angry--which is of far less importance than the severe sorrow that our discourtesy of manner has brought to our friends--I fear to all considerate and thoughtful Englishmen. Let me illustrate: When the Panama tolls controversy arose, Taft ceased to speak the language of the natural man and lapsed into lawyer's courthouse zigzagging mutterings. Knox wrote a letter to the British Government that would have made an enemy of the most affectionate twin brother--all mere legal twists and turns, as agreeable as a pocketful of screws. Then various bovine "international lawyers" wrote books about it. I read them and became more and more confused the further I went: you always do. It took me some time to recover from this word-drunk debauch and to find my own natural intelligence again, the common sense that I was born with. Then I saw that the whole thing went wrong from the place
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